Posted
by
ScuttleMonkeyon Friday May 22, 2009 @06:40PM
from the mote-in-uncle-sam's-eye dept.

cheezitmike writes "This week in Washington, DC, a group of Sci-Fi writers is helping the US Department of Homeland Security envision the future at the 2009 Homeland Security Science & Technology Stakeholders Conference. The agency is hoping the interaction between writers and bureaucrats helps the government 'break old habits of thought' and 'help managers think more broadly about projects and their potential reactions and unintended consequences.' And, it's at minimal expense to taxpayers, since the writers are consulting pro bono."

You know, while I understand why government officials (particularly the ones higher up) are referred to as morons and the like, I think it's far more likely that they're well aware that they're dishonest with the public and serve themselves and come across as idiots because of their tangled web of lies which really doesn't matter that much once you consider how easy it is to sway public opinion with propaganda.

Of course, given that the great majority of candidates are self-serving (morons) to begin with it'

Idaho, Nevada or Texas after the Union dissolves. That's my plan. Don't think that those states are going sit on their hands if the government doesn't start reining itself in. A whole bunch of states are considering, or have even passed in at least one case, legislation to reassert their 10th Amendment rights. That's long overdue.

We are living in a time of Constituional crisis that has been building for many years. Obama is doing everything he can to push us over the edge that Clinton and Bush, etc, le

It is hard not to when your realistic choices consist of moron A or moron B. Look at the UK at the moment: pretty much the entire parliament has been caught with their hands in the till. This clearly shows that a majority of politicians, regardless of party, are not suitable candidates for the job. We need a system where the cost to run for office is not so high so we can persuade people with normal careers to run.

It seems like they might have been better off using writers for a show like 24 or CSI where they have to be at-least realistic enough to seem "plausible" to the audience. On one of the comentaries for 24, they get their ideas from real life, but make things like repositioning satellites or breaking crypto go much quicker than it can in real life. They'd be better off getting those writers with engineers to say "what would it take to sdo x,y,z like we did in Season 4, Episode 2" to set more realistic short-t

More to the point, there is a difference between Science Fiction, and Science Fantasy. Star Drek is almost science fiction, but star wars is science fantasy... Bloody book stores even put horror and pure fantasy in the section marked "Science Fiction".

Regan had a team of science fiction advisers including Larry Niven back in the 80's to help him. In his Novel Footfall he has a good fictional account of meetings between them and the government with during a crises.

Seriously, consulting sci-fi authors? How about consulting superheros like Captain Common Sense?

Unfortunately, there's good reason to believe that Captain Common Sense is a homophobic theist. To draw the kinds of enlightened conclusions that the parent does, it turns out that we need to override our common sense tendencies. Consulting sci-fi writers is actually quite a clever way of dealing with the limitations of common sense.

A big recurring theme in a lot of sci-fi i read/watch is manipulation of the invisible guy in the sky to control others.Foundation & Foundation and empire (the mule stuff is more straight up sci-fi, but the religion and economic control is quite insightful)Stargate (movie & SG1), apart from the obvious goa'uld stuff, the series regularly has local leaders keep the superstition going abuse their position even when there is no goa'uld. (not really insightful but hey it's available in tv form)

Ideas, created with pure thought and imagination, that are offered to the government sounds like a much better process than those offered by politicians and lobbyists.
Generational ideas are what can improve our place in life, not those created from greed of power.

"Ideas, created with pure thought and imagination, that are offered to the government" sounds like the kind of insane bullshit spouted by political and religious extremists. We don't want this. We want government to be based on a factual, informed, and insightful understanding of reality. The Evangelical Talibanization of American society and government is what we should be escaping, not promoting. I know, I know, these are sci fi writers, not Commercial Christianity preachers like the last administartion.

It's the scope of the quality idea that matters. It's one thing to work hard to build a plant in a certain district so you can get elected again next year and quite another to plan for a society using generational ideas that span more than the length of a politicians career. We need more dreams, like the Apollo program, to drive our creation and innovation or our society will stagnate and destroy itself. Until we manage our natural desires of pride and selfishness we must rely on our natural talents like

I understand your point, but it does not address my complaint. It is by no means a given that sci fi writers per se fulfill your point. Getting policy ideas from fiction writers is a dubious ploy at best, and utterly insane at worst.

Well It's pretty clear to a lot of people that those in power are usually committed to staying in power. These people work hard to sell themselves and the ideas that they adopt so they are more popular then the other guy. Certainly these people gain skills in people/business/image management. However these skills don't necessarily prepare them to be the best at managing a society/city. Collaborative input from others with different perspectives, I believe, is essential. These writers, whether they writ

Umm maybe because the scientists and engineers come from several different branches of knowledge and are trained in a measurable science that human emotion has no part in? An "investment banker" isn't a man of science he's closer to a shaman or priest who gives a guess with numbers thrown in and is reliant on humans not to get too scared or fearless otherwise it becomes useless gibberish.

Most numbers people in investment banks these days have hard science
training, either an engineering or physics or math degree.

The degree is not the problem, the underlying question is do you want
government to be advised by experts with a narrow and self serving
focus on their own small part of the industry? This is how you get solutions
like bailing banks out while letting ordinary people lose their houses.
By most definitions, that's not what democratic government is all about.

These guys do best exactly what we don't need more of from the DHS - "movie plot threats."

"Movie plot threats" are a dime a dozen, we will bankrupt ourselves trying to defend against even a fraction of a precent of them. We need to spend money on the basics like first responders, medical facilities, emergency planning, etc that apply to any threat, man-made or acts of god.

And once that stuff is taken care of to a reasonable degree, the rest of the money needs to stay in the hands of private citizens who will make much more productive use of it - whether it is as simple as buying food and shelter for their families or running small businesses.

If you knew WTF you were talking about, you'd be well aware that these people understand the stupidity of movie plot threats precisely because they spend a great deal of time trying to invent plausible scenarios themselves. Many of these guys and gals have been consulting for the government long before DHS existed.

If you knew WTF you were talking about, you'd be well aware that these people understand the stupidity of movie plot threats precisely because they spend a great deal of time trying to invent plausible scenarios themselves.

I call bullshit. These people do not have an education or specialization in public policy or any other field applicable to non-movie-plot threats. Their entire careers are based on writing entertaining fiction and not the drudgery of high quality infrastructure planning.

Many of these guys and gals have been consulting for the government long before DHS existed.

Well if that's true, which I kinda doubt, then it was just as stupid to be hiring them back then as it is now.

If you would like to challenge their credibility, all of them have an internet presence and many of them keep blogs. I'm sure they would welcome your input, given your superior knowledge of the issues. Just make sure to post links via Slashdot so we may all learn from you as well.

My credibility, that derives from knowing how to read, and having read the SIGMA website and several of the blogs of its members?

And yet, you are completely incapable of providing a single link to back up your claims. Funny that.

As to your assertion, that a bureaucrat can anticipate threats better than science fiction authors

Not at all what I wrote. What I wrote was that focusing on the billions of one-off threats is a total waste of time and money because we can't afford to protect against every single threat someone can dream up.

But thanks for providing a perfect example of what I was talking about. So far we've had one semi-movie plot threat come true - just one. And look at the billions of dollars we've wasted on preventi

Why should I waste my time on Google, when you are the one projecting a ridiculous personal conception of science fiction authors? This is a Socratic troll-alogue, and I'm leading you toward wisdom, but you're going to work for it.

It sounds like a real waste of time. The government calling on a group of science fiction writers to come up with ideas for the future? Are they out of their own ideas or something? What are they doing working in the government then? This just seems like a way to generate a fluff media piece listing cool fantasy technologies to make everyone hopeful and temporarily forget about economic problems and Democrat in-fighting.

I think Niven and Pournelle can claim "prior art" on this one since they claim to be responsible for the collapse of the Soviet Union by advising Reagan to go ahead with the horribly expensive Star Wars initiative.
Can't remember which of his books mentioned it in the footnotes.

A federal research director fantasized about a cellphone that could simultaneously text and detect biochemical attacks. Multiple cellphones in a crowd would confirm and track the spread. The master of ceremonies for the week was Greg Bear, the sci-fi novelist whose book "Quantico" featured FBI agents battling a designer plague targeting specific ethnic groups.

"What if we had a black box that IDs DNA on the scene?" Bear asked a panel of firefighters and p

Niven said a good way to help hospitals stem financial losses is to spread rumors in Spanish within the Latino community that emergency rooms are killing patients in order to harvest their organs for transplants.

I actually submitted an article covering this a little over a year ago, when Schneier talked about it on his blog. It wasn't picked up, but then again, I quoted from the more embarrassing things said at the conference, so there is little surprise to that.

I actually used David Brin's quote in the article summary. Oops.

"David Brin, keeping on the topic of empowering citizens with mobile phone technology, delivered a self-described 'rant' on the lack of funds being spent to support citizen reservists to b

Andrews founded an organization of sci-fi writers to offer imaginative services in return for travel expenses only. Called Sigma, the group has about 40 writers. Over the years, members have addressed meetings organized by the Department of Energy, the Army, Air Force, NATO and other agencies they care not to name.

Hm. The last book Robert Ludlum wrote was called "The Sigma Protocol". It was published the same year he died. He was 73.

It was about a collective of creepy post-Nazi idea men commissioned by Hitler to re-envision the world. Well, after the war, these men carried on with their pursuit of Bad Science in the shadows. Central to the plot was a string of assassinations of old men who had fallen out of the club because they thought what they were about to achieve was too horrific even for a bunch of ex-Nazis. The cataclysmic ending resulted in explosions and heroic rewards, etc., but also with a young software billionaire carrying on the creepy work. . . (The book's last page makes a very deliberate jab at Bill Gates and his recent affiliation with the fucking creepy organization, Planned Parenthood.) Or maybe it wasn't deliberate. Still, an elbow in the ribs is an elbow in the ribs intended or not.

Whatever the case, I'll leave the obvious connective threads dangling because they're rather over-dramatic in the same way that the premier episode of Lone Gunmen was just too stupidly prophetic to be taken seriously. Even though it was right on the money.

Anyway. . . The real point I'd like to make is that any dick-head writer 'Heinlein' enough to work with the DHS needs a stern talking to or failing that, a good ass-kicking. Sci-Fi writers can be exceptional dorks sometimes.

I mean. . , did anybody else notice the distinctive Starship Troopers feel to J.J. Abram's Star Trek? (I'm talking about the cinematic version of ST, not the book).

And on a semi-related note. . . One interesting thing in the world of speculative fiction which totally caught me off guard was that Dollhouse has been renewed for a second season. WTF? I mean, that's cool and all, but. . , has hell frozen over?

These thoughts may all seem disconnected, but they really aren't. Don't think too hard though. It's Friday and the week has been long.

If they invited Bruce Schneier [wikipedia.org] to speak instead of a gaggle of Sci-Fi "movie plot" writers then they might actually learn a thing or two about homeland security AND it wouldn't be a complete waste of the taxpayer's money or the politician's time (the former being much more valuable than the later).

The last administration already did this with results ranging from tedious to risible. Then it was the usual suspects: Larry Niven, Drake, etc, I think. I can't be bothered to read the article to see who it was this time.

Not confidence-building. If it was done casually and with fewer buzzwords and less self-congratulation all around and not under any official auspices, I would be less appalled. As it is, it makes me a little sick to my stomach.

You have got to be kidding. Science fiction? Could we have picked a fiction genre more devoid of factual understanding? Fantasy, maybe?

There is a reason why sci-fi and fantasy are often grouped together. They're both factually delusional in many regards. One has space ships and perfect governments; the other has faeries and trolls. There is little difference, in most cases. Yes, some sci-fi has a political theme, but more often than not it takes the role of poor plot device or fantastical utopia (ala Star T

Just curious, but you have a particular reason why Kal Penn shouldn't be a Public Liaison? I have no particular feelings on his appointment but the idea of an actor as the public face for the current administration is logical to me and not horrifying at all. After all we've been lied to for years by amateur liars called lawyers, at least Obama got a professional to do it. Gives me hope they might actually use knowledgeable professionals for other departments. Like oohhh.... I dunno scientists and engine

Maybe because "Office of Public Liaison" sounds somewhat like "Office of Public Lying" - and because its largely a propaganda post. Combine this with the fact that Kal Penn was a financial and personal supporter of Obama and there is a disconcerting potential for sectarian preference and 'selective memory'.

Nobody seems to be trying to re-think capitalism. I'm not talking about the current crisis.
There's a more fundamental problem - increased productivity no longer results in higher real income. US per-capita real income per hour worked peaked in 1973.

Think about that for a moment. We have incredibly good production technology. 20% of the workforce makes all the real stuff. That number was 50% in 1950 and 90% in 1900. Yet
workdays have been getting longer for several decades.

The most successful attacks are all low tech. Even 9/11 was low tech, commander planes that practically fly themselves and point them at buildings. What they need to do is to stop thinking big and complex and start thinking big and simple. Like using truck mounted mosquito sprayers to spread salmonella infected water all over a city center. Or waiting until the dry Santa Anna Winds are just right and then creating a fire line along the highway several miles long. Think big but simple because that is wh